Hey, you music fans, get onto my iCloud

The launch of Apple’s music streaming service will kick-start a revolution in how we listen to our favourite sounds — and even make the iPod obsolete

The iCloud music service may render iPods obsolete (Masterfile Corporation)

R
emember when music was sold on vinyl, complete with lovingly prepared sleeve
notes and fold-out artwork? Next came 4.75in CDs in plastic cases that fell
apart. Then the iPod turned the industry upside down and music was
transformed into data that you downloaded and stored on computer memory.

Now, in a final retreat from ownership, you won’t even possess some strings of
binary code. Instead your new record collection will be housed entirely
online and accessed by you on a per-listen basis.

Tomorrow Steve Jobs, the boss of Apple, will unveil iCloud, a music service
that will render today’s iPods obsolete. Instead of you storing hundreds of
songs on an MP3 player, iCloud will grant you instant access to millions of
tunes online, streaming them over the internet to Apple phones and
computers. The service will join similar ones from Google and Amazon that
have been launched in America in